Inside, a musty, pitch-black space. From the close sound of their breathing, Jack guessed they were in a hallway. The floor was hard and smooth: more concrete. He tried to go slow, wary of what he might bang into, but one of the men grabbed his elbow and hustled him along. They stopped. Metal scraped. Someone turned Jack to the side and gave him a shove.
A bright bare light clicked on overhead, revealing a low-ceilinged room empty save for a card table, several folding chairs, and a rusty bedspring propped up against a plaster wall damp with rot. The room was eerily quiet—no traffic noise, no radios or voices, just the ragged cycles of their breathing.
On the floor in front of the bedspring spread a rust-colored stain. Jack took a deep breath—and gagged at a sickly-sweet odor he knew all too well. Up to that point, he’d been more confused than scared. Now he was seized by a deep, demoralizing panic. Was this what cows felt as they were forced through the final chute in a slaughterhouse?
The manager shoved him down into one of the chairs. Greenlee sneezed violently, then shuffled around behind the chair to tighten the knot binding Jack’s wrists.
“Too tight?” he asked.
Jack nodded.
“Good.” Greenlee sneezed again. “Shit!” he said. “I hate it down here.”
Jack closed his eyes for a moment. The back of his head was pounding; he felt a warm stickiness that was probably blood. He opened his eyes again. He couldn’t believe that when he first met the manager, the man had not raised his suspicions at all. So much for a veteran’s intuition.
“Go make the call,” the stranger told Greenlee. “I’ll keep watch.”
After the manager went out, the man pulled a chair over by the door, sat down, and leaned back till the chair tilted against the wall. He set the gun down on the card table and folded his arms coolly over his chest. After a few minutes he pulled an orange from his jacket pocket, peeled it, and ate it, watching Jack the whole time with a muted professional interest. He wiped his hands on his pants. Bored, he picked at the scraps of peel on the table. He grabbed a piece, took out a cigarette lighter, then squeezed the peel in front of the flame. The vaporized oil flared up. The man smiled.
With his arms strapped behind him, Jack’s shoulders ached as much as his bruised thighs. He wished he’d had the sense to call Daskivitch and tell him where he was going. The dust in the room made his nose itch. What if it got stuffed up and he couldn’t breathe? What if he got an asthma attack? He struggled to shake his head clear of such thoughts. He looked down at the red stain on the floor, then closed his eyes and tried to even out his breathing. His hands tingled with loss of circulation. They hurt till he lost all feeling in his arms.
This was what it was like to be a vic.
How long had he been down here? Half an hour? An hour? He had no idea. The back of his neck was caked with drying blood.
A faint noise sounded above and the stranger rose from his chair.
Muffled voices outside the door. The door scraped wide and Greenlee entered, followed by Randall Heiser, wearing a charcoal-gray suit. Heiser’s habitual scowl brightened at the sight of Jack.
Another man moved into the doorway. His short, massive arms hung wide of his body as if he’d left a coat hanger inside his black satin baseball jacket. The kind of crew-cut, pig-eyed weightlifter who might delight in working as a club bouncer—he was big enough to throw a dead body over a fence all by himself. He stood just inside the door with his meaty hands folded over his crotch and stared in a very odd way—Jack wondered if he was the one who liked knives.
Jack’s captor scowled at the new arrival. “Who the hell is this?”
Heiser pulled out a handkerchief, dusted off one of the folding chairs, then sat with a smug smile. “He’s my new friend. Don’t you worry about it. Ah thought it might be nice to have someone watching my back.”
The first strangers mouth worked as if he had just bit into something bitter. “You don’t trust me?”
Heiser shrugged. “Mistakes have been made. I need to make sure you boys do this one neat.” He pulled a small bottle of spring water from his suit pocket; Jack watched jealously as he cracked the top, took a long pull, and set the bottle down under his chair.
“Free up his mouth,” Heiser told Greenlee.
The manager moved forward and ripped the tape away. The skin around Jack’s mouth burned. He drew several deep breaths. “Are you out of your mind? I’m a New York City police detective—do you realize what kind of trouble you’re in right now?”
Heiser nodded at the sallow man, who stepped forward and calmly punched Jack in the mouth.
He decided it might be a good idea to shut up.
A phone trilled. Heiser pulled a tiny cellular out of his jacket, got up, and walked across the room. “I’ll be home soon. Yes…No…Don’t wait up. An hour and a half, two at the most.” He hung up and grinned. “Time to go—can’t keep the wife waiting.”
Jack licked his lip—it was wet and salty where the blow had split the skin. “Tell me something,” he said. “I know why you had Ortslee killed, but why get rid of a harmless kid like Tomas Berrios?”
“Don’t you think it would be a bad sahn if I answered that?” Heiser said. He paused to let the implication sink in, then grimaced. “Since you asked, that greasy little wetback invaded my privacy. Just as you’ve done.”
“He went into your apartment?”
“That’s right.”
“What did he do? What did he find?”
Heiser’s eyes narrowed. “He had no right to enter my home. To go into my den.”
Jack shook his head. Every killer he’d ever met had some “justification” for his crime. He prodded the man on. “I know what you’re up to. I know all about the garbage.”
Heiser’s eyes narrowed. “I think it’s time to wrap this up.”
“What was it? Was it the plans for the waste transfer station?”
Like a confused animal, Heiser considered Jack. “He took my blueprints,” he finally muttered.
“What did he want?”
Heiser snorted. “It was puhthetic: he asked for fifty thousand dollars. “You know what he said?”
Jack waited.
“He said fifty thousand dollars to him was like only fifty dollars to me.” Heiser picked a piece of lint off his pants leg. “I told him I wasn’t interested in having my money translated into greasy wetback dollars. But I did say that I’d pay him. I asked him to meet me right here, in fact.” He looked down at the bloodstain on the floor and nodded.
Jack sat up straight in his chair. “All right. Maybe you could get away with killing a porter and an old barge captain. But you won’t get away with making an NYPD detective disappear. Every cop in town will be on the case.”
Heiser grinned. “It might raise a ruckus if you just vanished. But what if you had a bad car accident tonight? What if you’d been drinking? You’ve had some problems with the booze recently, haven’t you, Detective? Going to AA meetings and all.”
Jack stared. He remembered a strange hunched man checking him out at one of the meetings.
Heiser took a pint bottle of liquor out of his pocket and unscrewed the cap.
Jack turned away and clenched his mouth shut. Heiser nodded to the first stranger, who went around behind Jack, grabbed him by the throat, and clamped a hand firmly over his mouth and nose. He struggled until he almost fainted. When the man finally removed his hand, Jack gasped for air. Heiser stepped forward, upturned the bottle, and rammed it into Jack’s mouth. He couldn’t help inhaling a gulp of fiery whiskey. He choked and sputtered. Heiser and the stranger repeated the harsh procedure until he had downed half the bottle.
“We should get going,” the goon in the baseball jacket said, standing over by the door.
“Good idea,” Greenlee said, rubbing his eyes. “This dust is killing me.”
Heiser looked at his watch. “All right. Let’s get it done.”
It was the first stranger who stepped forward. He reached dow
n under the bedspring and pulled out a strange black canvas roll. He set it on the card table and untied it. Jack’s stomach dropped: it was a chef’s knife kit. The man spread it open, examined his options, and pulled out a small, thin, hooked blade. Fillet knife.
Jack couldn’t suppress a low moan. He thought he might pass out.
The goon in the baseball jacket gave a nervous glance at his boss. “I thought you said we were gonna smash up his car.”
“Why wait?” Heiser said. “He doesn’t have to be alive for that.”
“You’re making a big mistake,” Jack said.
“Hush,” Heiser said. He nodded at the stranger. “Let’s show the detective what happens to people who interfere with my business.”
The man calmly poured some oil on a whetstone and sharpened the weapon; each pass made a scraping noise that reminded Jack of Heiser sitting in his fancy apartment, grinding his onyx stones in his closed palm. The stranger hefted the knife and took a step.
Jack lurched to his feet and staggered forward.
Startled, Greenlee grabbed the gun from the card table and fired. The shot popped hollow in the bare room. Jack jerked back as if pulled by a giant hand. He stumbled over the chair and crumpled onto the damp floor.
The goon in the baseball jacket reached into the back of his waistband. He pulled out a small stubby gun and shot the knife man in the back. Greenlee wheeled around, but the big man raised his gun and shot him in the face.
Jack thought he was hallucinating.
The big man spun around. “Get down, motherfucker!” he screamed at Heiser in an odd high voice. “Lie down! Hands behind your head!” He tucked his head down toward his chest and shouted, “Move in, move in! We’re in the warehouse next door!” His eyes were wide and he was hyperventilating. “The back! We’re in the back! Downstairs!”
Greenlee lay on his side in the middle of the room. He sucked air through what was left of his mouth. All Jack could see of the knife man was his legs sticking out from under the card table. Bitter smoke hung in the air.
Holding his gun in both hands, the man in the baseball jacket bent down over Heiser. “Don’t move an inch, shit-head!”
He turned to Jack. “It’s okay!” he shouted. “I’m a federal agent. Fuck—we told you to stay out of this.” He knelt down and felt Jack’s neck for a pulse. “Ten-thirteen!” he shouted into his wire. “Ten-thirteen!” The most urgent police code. Officer down.
Jack struggled to lift his head: a puddle of blood had soaked through his shirt and pooled on his chest; it fountained up.
He thought of his brother. He thought of his son.
The world died.
epilogue
ON SUCH A BEAUTIFUL fall day, it would have been easy to forget that Green-Wood Cemetery was a place for the dead.
The burial grounds covered almost five hundred acres. Ben Leightner walked up a steep rise near the northern edge. He’d followed many twisting lanes to get here, all paths with soothing names: Jasmine, Cypress, Lily, Laurel…Hoping for a view of Manhattan, he climbed higher. The cemetery was all hill and hollow, forested with trees, stone angels, and obelisks.
From the top, he saw only more marker-covered hills. On this crisp day, the sun flooded the trees in a bright glory of red, orange, and yellow.
After he entered the cemetery, he’d seen a guard in a security car and a couple of orange-vested workers raking leaves, but in the past few minutes he hadn’t seen anyone. The few sounds were pleasant ones: the crunch of leaves beneath his feet, the wind sighing in the trees, a hint of traffic so far away it sounded like a softly rushing brook. It was so peaceful he could hardly believe he was in the middle of Brooklyn.
He had received word of his father’s shooting early the next morning through a phone call from his dad’s boss, one Detective Sergeant Tanney. The sergeant offered his sympathies, but very little information.
The official story was released two days later, when the police commissioner himself announced that Detective First Grade Jack Leightner had gone down in the middle of a valiant attempt to arrest the murderer of two Brooklyn residents.
The real story didn’t emerge until several days after that, when an anonymous tip to the Daily News opened up a very different account. It turned out that Randall Heiser had been under covert investigation by the FBI for two years. Though the Feds should—in hindsight—have moved against him after the Berrios and Ortslee murders, they argued that they’d lacked any direct evidence of Heiser’s involvement. They claimed that a shaky indictment would have jeopardized a much broader investigation into racketeering in the national real estate and development markets. In their defense, they pointed out that following the murders they had assigned an undercover team to monitor the man around the clock.
Two senior FBI managers and an NYPD lieutenant were suspended from duty pending the conclusion of a full investigation into the matter.
Ben heard a noise and his heart iced over, but it was only a squirrel skittering through the leaves. He tromped down the hill, retracing his footsteps. At the bottom he crossed an asphalt lane called Linden Avenue and climbed another ridge, this one thickly wooded, the trees shading ornate marble mausoleums. Even in death, the rich had grander homes. The view opened onto a sunny clearing below. His father stood there, leaning on his cane in front of his brother Peter’s humble tombstone. The cane was a recent luxury after two weeks in intensive care, a month in a private bed, then a month in which he shuffled around with a walker. At first, before the true story came out, the city had tried to lawyer out of full coverage for the medical bills—they argued that his father had been officially suspended before the incident, that he’d acted outside the department’s jurisdiction and responsibility—but his boss, Sergeant Tanney, threatened to quit if they didn’t do the right thing.
The doctors said his father might never be fit enough to qualify for active police duty again. Ben was surprised to discover that the old man didn’t seem to care. A week ago, he’d gone to visit his father at the apartment in Midwood. (The landlord was doing relatively well upstairs with the help of a home-care attendant and he’d brushed off his son’s demands that Jack move out.) Much of the conversation was still awkward, but at least this time they had more to talk about.
The old man had been down there by the grave site for almost an hour. Ben was about to step down the hill, but he saw his father’s lips moving. Embarrassed, he turned away to give him more time.
These days his father seemed lighter, somehow, which was kind of weird, considering that he’d been shot, and all. Maybe it was the therapy. His dad would never have admitted that he was seeing a shrink, but Ben had accidentally come across a bill on the old man’s kitchen counter. His father did say that as soon as he got better, he planned to go back to school for a certificate—he wanted to try for a new career as a drug and alcohol rehab counselor.
Maybe it was the romance. It was pretty weird seeing his father with a new girlfriend. In the hospital, Ben had been grumpy with her out of loyalty to his mom, but Michelle turned out to be nice, and she seemed to really care about his dad.
His father called out for him.
“I’m up here,” Ben shouted.
Jack looked up, shielding his eyes, to locate his son among the shady leaves. He rested his hand on the tombstone for a moment, then slowly set off up the path.
Ben pulled out a camera and began to film. Someday, if he had a son, the kid would be able to see what his grandfather had looked like when he was still a relatively young man.
acknowledgments
I’D LIKE TO THANK the many people who helped me research this book. They include Buddy Scotto, Sonny Balzano, Adam Cohen, Kevin O’Leary, Chino Suarez, Ivor Hansen, NYPD Detective Sergeant Christopher Jackson, former NYPD Detectives James J. Conaboy and Bill Clark, and several kind detectives from the 76th Precinct. (Any factual errors are mine.) Several fine readers gave me invaluable advice: Miriam Cohen, Tim Cross, Chris Erikson, and Elana Frankel. Important suppo
rt or encouragement came from Michael Epstein, Naomi Ayala, Roxanne Aubrey, Todd Colby, Thom Garvey, Lee Sherratt, Phyllis Rose, James Wilcox, Jared Cooper, Mary Beth Lewis, Edward Scrivani, Dr. Ian Canino, and Paul Griffin (a.k.a. The King).
Thanks to Michael Ackerman and Eric Wolf for the photos. Very special thanks to Jen Bervin. I’m deeply grateful to my agent, Paul Chung, and to Ruth Cavin, Pete Wolverton, and Julie Sullivan at Thomas Dunne Books.
Turn the page to continue reading from the Jack Leightner Crime Novels
What is this river but the one
Which drags the things we love
Processions of debris like floating lamps
Toward the radiance in which they go out?
—GALWAY KINNEL, FROM “THE RIVER THAT IS EAST”
CHAPTER one
OUT ON THE COLD, blustery end of a Brooklyn pier, Herman Rios and Angel Oviedo had just caught a flounder when death literally drifted into their lives.
“What the hell is that?” said Herman as his friend reeled in the unhappy fish. Prior to this moment, they had never seen one of the bottom-dwelling creatures in its natural state.
Angel stared at the fish, which had both eyes on one side of its flat body. He dropped it on the concrete and backed away fast.
“Throw it back,” urged Herman. “That bastit must’ve grew up near a nuclear power plant.”
“Least I caught something,” Angel said, glancing at his friend’s empty bucket.
Herman shrugged. He bent down and rummaged through his tackle box until he found a new lure. The guy at the bait shop had sworn by it: The head was lead and the body was comprised of four little pieces of surgical tubing.
Angel stared out at where his line led down into the gray-green water. He was hoping for a few stripers, which were supposed to run well in the cold weather. After a while he grew tired of watching the filament and his gaze traveled beyond the sheltered cove. Red Hook was a humble neighborhood of warehouses and machine shops, but the waterfront offered a spectacular view of New York Harbor lying under a vast cloud-dappled plain of sky. Across the south stretched the spare, simple span of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. To the southwest, across the gleaming harbor, lay the wooded shoreline of Staten Island. The Statue of Liberty stood in the middle of the harbor; she seemed so close Angel almost believed he could chuck a rock and hit her green torch. Some anonymous island covered with low brick buildings sat in the water farther north, and then the view was dominated by the southern skyline of Manhattan, bold glass buildings reflecting back the morning sun. There was a huge recent hole there, but Angel preferred not to think about it.
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